By Junior Remy Haring
Paris, France, January 3, 1936
In a series of stories from all over the world, collectively known as the Kaiserreich Files (and inspired by the titular mod for Hearts of Iron IV), blogger Remy Haring dives into an alternate fictional history–a history in which the Central Powers win the First World War.
The air was crisp and cold as I walked the Parisian street garnished in snow. At the corner was a little cafe. All the sidewalk chairs were taken in for the winter. A Syndicalist banner was draped on the wall outside that called for the French to support a general workers’ strike in America. I pushed open the splintered, wooden door and entered. I found a seat at the window. Across the street was a large, concrete apartment.
The inside was warm and relatively cozy. The smell of coffee permeated the air. I picked up the newspaper l’époque syndicaliste. “Quand Fera-t-il Jour, Camarade?” played on the jukebox. A poster of a French worker holding up the hand of an American worker and a British worker holding up the hand of a Russian worker read, “Support your fellow proletariat in the worldwide revolution.” I looked down at my table. It was covered with gouges and scratches. A waiter approached me.
“What would you like tonight?” she asked.
“Just an espresso, please,” I replied.
“Will that be all for tonight?”
“Yes, please.”
The coffee was watered down and tasted like sawdust, but it was reassuringly warm. I began reading the newspaper. To say a lot has happened in the news would be an understatement. The Berlin stock market crashed hard recently in Schwarzer Montag or Black Monday. Unemployment skyrocketed and bread lines stretched along streets. The situation was particularly bad in Poland where the ineffective regency council in charge did little about the situation. Now mass protests were breaking out in Poland as they demanded complete independence instead of being a lapdog of the Kaiser. Over in Russia, President Kerensky had been shot and killed. The fledgling republic was in chaos.
Here in France, a big election was going on between the current Syndicalists, the Anarchists, and the Sorelians. And, right then, a fierce argument broke out in the cafe. At the table in front of me were two people. One looked to be 40. He was covered in black soot and wore a miner’s uniform. The other was much younger and wore a bright yellow hard hat and a neon green vest. Welding goggles were draped on his neck, and he looked like he had just left the steel mill.
“The Syndicalists are right: for the proletariat to truly be able to revolt against the bourgeoisie is for a state to be decentralized and for the government to consist of small, local worker’s unions as decision makers,” the miner said.
“You are an idealistic fool if you are to think that a decentralized state would be able to stand up against the bourgeoisie. The Totalists Ioseb ‘Stalin’ Dzhugashvili and Musollini were right saying that the only way for the proletariat to defeat the bourgeoisie is a highly centralized and militarized state,” the steel worker replied.
“Then we would just become as totalitarian and brutal as the bourgeoisie!” countered the miner.
The steel worker threw a punch at the miner, and the argument went from verbal to physical. It all culminated when the miner hit the steel worker over the head with a barstool. The steel worker crumbled to the ground, and the two were promptly forced out of the cafe.
Meanwhile, the election results for every commune in the country were being reported across the radio. Outside, a truck with the letter A in a circle painted on its side pulled up to the sidewalk. Suddenly, a brick crashed through the window and nearly hit one of the waiters. Shattered glass coated one of the booths and the floor. Thankfully, no one was hurt. The driver shouted, “Death to the syndicalist rats and the state! Long live the anarchists!” And, the truck sped off.
So much for class solidarity, I mused and turned to the next page of the newspaper.
*”When Will the Day End, Comrade?”–French Socialist song from 1968
